


nothing on my tongue but hallelujah

by burning_brightly, Golden_Ticket



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, definitely NSFW, enjoy Scott as a softboi with impulse control issues, fondly known as the angst-fest, in which our two favourite bandmates can't keep away from each other, misery offset by smut and poor decisions, or keep their hands off each other, post-Sochi blues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-19 06:23:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15504234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burning_brightly/pseuds/burning_brightly, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Ticket/pseuds/Golden_Ticket
Summary: She broke his heart months ago, and his life is a shambles both literally and metaphorically. That still doesn't mean he can ignore her when her name lights up his phone.Some nights he wishes he could.





	1. there was a time you let me know

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, friends! This fine evening/morning, we would like to share with you a little something we've been working on for quite some time now. Golden_Ticket and I came up with it together and then plotted it out - I took over Scott's side of things, and she took over Tessa's. The rest of the story we developed and filled in together (except the shameless smut in the second chapter - the blame for that goes to Golden_Ticket...be very afraid). 
> 
> We'd like to say that the church mentioned does not exist to the best of our knowledge. Also, we are working based on a headcanon that has them attempting to date until the end of April 2014, at which point Tessa broke up with him and busted his heart into smithereens. This will be a little angsty...so be aware. (And by a little angsty, let us clarify: there's a _whole heck of a lot of angst_.
> 
> Hope you enjoy - let us know what you think!
> 
> (Title taken from Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah.")

It’s not a miracle that Tessa picks up the phone, even if it should be considered as such because it’s the dead of night. But it’s not like she’s sleeping a lot these days. Even after humouring Ryan for another two episodes of Game of Thrones (“It has knights and boobs, Tess, it’s the best show ever!”), she still hadn’t been tired enough to go to sleep. Her bedfellow-slash-friend-with-benefits-slash-who-the-fuck-knows snoring like a lumber mill hadn’t much helped her insomnia either. So she eventually stopped trying. She just stared at her ceiling, watching the erratic, flittery flight of a moth, feeling a sense of kinship there. That moth didn’t seem to know where it was going either. She ponders this, how she can feel so much like an insect trapped in a strange prison somewhere and how that’s very tragically funny (like a reverse Kafka situation) when her phone screen lights up with nine letters she is at once loathe and longing to see. “Scott Moir” is calling. It’s 3:54 AM.

She picks up with no hesitation, though. She always does.

“Hello?” she whispers, not that Ryan would wake. If his own snoring can’t rattle him to consciousness, her talking in hushed tones with her skating partner on the phone won’t either.

“Hey,” Scott says and then nothing.

This has been happening for a while now. In the beginning he still slurred something, obviously drunk. Then eventually he had stopped with that, just called and stayed silent and she would start talking about random nothings after a while. Tonight, however, she doesn’t know what to say. So the silence stretches out languidly, both of them just listening to the other breathe into their phones and when the silence has gone on long enough to be an air horn, Scott mutters, quiet like a whisper: “I miss you.” And she can’t help the sharp breath this coaxes out of her. More silence follows, in which she deliberates what to say when there is nothing but the truth that feels right to reply with and even that seems unwise.

“I miss you, too,” she says anyway, her voice low, and Scott, about a fifteen-minute drive west from her in his fixer-upper house at the edge of Ilderton, closes his eyes. And breathes. Everything is spinning. He has no idea why he keeps doing this to himself. Sleeping in this place time and time again because he can get drunk here in peace and not worry his mother. The drinking in the first place, or the calling Tessa. It all wrecks him up in equal measure.

“Can I…” he tries, not knowing why but very aware that he’s doing the equivalent of ramming a rusty knife into his own gut. He trudges on anyway, because no one could accuse Scott Moir of learning his lessons these days. “Can I just come over, T?”

"Scott," she whispers, the exact cadence of something between regret and pity he has dreaded and known was coming anyway. "I don't think that's a good idea."

And he hears a low rumble in the background, a man's snoring, and something in him breaks all over again. It keeps breaking, and breaking, and he wonders how it's possible to keep breaking if you never mended in the first place.

“Okay,” he says, because what else can he do? He won’t argue. And he certainly won’t drive by her place when she has that asshole over (that asshole that she has no problem spending her days and nights with when she told him that she couldn’t have a relationship at the moment...but, as he knows, that is specific to “can’t have a relationship with you, Scott”).

“I’m…” she starts but then falls silent. She’s not finishing the sentence. Hasn’t for months. She’s sorry but for some reason she won’t say it. That’s maybe the worst thing about this.

(That’s not true, the worst thing is _everything_. The fact that she’s not there, the fact that she doesn’t love him, the fact that his whole life started falling apart when she gave up on him.)

Scott barely says goodbye before hanging up and Tessa is still holding the phone to her ear, long moments after the line went dead. She’s in a state of suspension, hovering above her own body in that suddenly very crowded bed of hers. But sadly, that elevation doesn’t last too long. She crashes back into her bones with a force she wouldn’t need and with it comes weight, unease and heat. She feels sweaty and gross, her blanket smothering her, Ryan too big, too broad and too _there_ beside her. She clamours out of her sheets, still clutching her phone and slips into her ensuite-bathroom on stony feet. Inside it’s dark because she doesn’t turn on the lights. Her reflection is not something she wants to see right now. Not as she puts her face under running water, not when she puts her forehead against the cold tiles to cool down and not when she wakes her phone up, drowning her surroundings in pale, ghostly light and texts him.

Much later, she’ll ask herself why she made that decision, why she texted Scott instead of just crawling back into bed with Ryan and maybe wake him up to fill the emptiness inside her with his version of intimacy (which is dust and self-centeredness, honestly). And she’ll find that she doesn’t really have an answer. She didn’t have a great big reason other than that void in her chest that made her feel liquid and tetherless. That made her yearn for a home, like being pulled down by gravity. The moment Scott indicated that he wanted to see her, something had snapped in her and left her thoughtless. She wasn’t calculating or planning anything. The one reason that she’d had was plain and simple: she just wanted to be close to him again.

“Meet me at the church in 25,” the text notification on Scott’s phone says, lighting up his pitch dark bedroom (honestly, it’s not much of a bedroom...he has a mattress on the floor and clothes and empty beer cans scattered around the floor beside it from his night’s exploits. It looks almost like a junkie’s den, if you want to be harsh about it). He rolls out of bed, determining quickly that this was a mistake, because his head is pounding instantly and a moment later, his stomach is turning enough to get him to his feet and out into his yard. The plumbing won’t be fixed until he gets around to hiring someone for it so until then, he has to make do with a porter potty.

Not that he empties his guts into that. He doesn’t make it there in time. So he ends up hurling into the bushes, feeling like death. It’s not a question if he’ll take his butt to that church (the abandoned one with the parking lot where their parents had traded them off as kids to whoever parent would drive them to the rink in the morning). He’s going to go. When Tessa calls, he will always go, no matter what it costs him - may that be money or his health or his heart. The question is how he gets there. He debates driving but then thinks of his mother begging him not to take the car when he’s been drinking and thinks better of it. So, it’ll be a twenty minute walk to the church in the dead of night.

He braves it, though, and doesn’t wait to set out much longer than it takes to get into some clean clothes and brush his teeth with a bottle of store-water by the gallon. Then he walks, by the side of the road, chewing breath mints and worrying a little bit that he might get run over for not being visible enough in his dark sweater on dark jeans but there’s no car in either direction for the entire way. Her white Acura is already sitting in the parking lot and he’s pretty much sober when he gets there, seeing her head dipped low as she looks at something on her phone. He approaches the car, knocking at the boot so as to not startle her when he opens the passenger door and climbs into the seat.

He glances over at her glancing at him and tries to keep his face impassive, hoping like hell she won't smell like Ryan's cologne. She doesn't, thank God, just strawberry-shampoo with a hint of vanilla and _Tessa_ , and just breathing in the scent of her eases the worst of the ache around his chest. But it’s a false peace, he knows it. It’ll come to haunt him. Like that look she gives him, which sort of manages to be hollow and suffocatingly meaningful at the same time. There’s no air in the car anymore, just as soon a he fully lets himself look at her. She seems tired but even with bags under her eyes, she’s still the most goddamn beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

(Even if sometimes when he watches her, he still has a hard time to reconcile her immaculate face now with that of the girl who never wanted to look at pictures of herself because she hated her nose so much she would sometimes actually cry about it. Now she’s so entirely flawless, most times he feels like he’s looking at some sort of celestial being. He doesn’t know if that does him any good, really. When they were kids, with their features at around an acceptable, even level of every-day-regular-handsome, he’d thought they’d look pretty good together. Sitting next to her now, he feels like an awkward youth pining for a Sports Illustrated cover model. But then again, before he fully knew it, she had already been way out of his league before. And not even because of her looks.)

Tessa studies his features for a while, taking stock. His eyes aren’t glazed over like they usually are when he’s been drinking, instead they fix hers with a clear sort of desolation that hurts, starting from her heart and reaching into every last follicle of her hair. He’s sobered up considerably since the phone call and that’s at least a small blessing. He smells like breath mints and detergent. And so much better than Ryan, even if he’s probably been drinking all night. She realises this when she gulps down a breath, the full force of his scent suddenly so close and immediate around her and feels so much like she’s home, she could cry.

“Why did you want to see me?” she asks so the tears can’t start, voice low and testing. She wants to touch him for no reason she dares to name but she’s pretty sure she shouldn’t, pretty sure she has ceased any right to.

Scott looks at her, every bit of him straining towards her, to touch, to hold, to shake her, maybe. He can see her struggling to figure out what to do with him, how to be with him, and it breaks him all over again. He's so tired. He can't sleep without her anymore, not really, and he's so tired it hurts. Everything hurts. Being with her hurts, but being without her makes his bones ache in their sockets, so much it makes every muscle cringe under the strain. It seems there's nowhere he can go, nothing he can do but live in this awful vortex of pain that is loving Tessa.

He doesn’t have words to answer her and so she takes a breath to go on talking. Like she does so much lately. Filling his silence with nothing specific.

"Do you want to break into the church?" she asks him, unprompted, unexpectedly and very specific indeed, and for a moment he thinks he’s misheard. He startles. Who is this person and what the hell has she done with Tess? They barely know each other anymore and now she wants to go B and E with him? Not that he says no. He’ll go wherever she leads him, just mutters, “Okay,” and follows her out of the car, the clicking of the doors locking and their footsteps the only sounds to break the quiet of the night.

They round the little church, to the opposite side to where there is a big heavy iron chain on the back entrance that is long enough for lithe people like Scott and Tessa to fit through and get to the door that hasn't been fully closed in years. He offers a hand to help her climb and she takes it just as long as she needs the support and not a moment longer (as par for the course for her in the last year or so).

Inside, they’re met by the moldy smell of a slowly deteriorating structure that is crumbling from years of humidity streaming in from outside. There’s is graffiti on the walls (polite Canadian ones about who has been here and how pot should be legalized, _please_ ) and empty bottles and cans cluttering the space. (Scott ignores how it looks and smells a little too much like his house.)

The interior has been stripped save for a couple of benches, and nothing behind the altar is left, making it feel eerie and desolate. It’s a feeling that is not helped at all by the fact that it’s cool and damp at the same time; Scott feels momentarily like he is drenched in cold sweat, but he can’t really be sure if that’s just because of the space that is swallowing them up. It’s still warm enough to take his sweater off, though. He’s fine in his shirt, and he spreads it out so that Tessa doesn’t have to sit on the cold ground.

They sit then, for a while. Not at all what they were, but not quite strangers either. It feels like they have spent so much time in the murky calm after the storm, they’ve forgotten how the clear sky looks, who they really are, beyond all this tension and the conversations they’re resolutely not having.

“Why did you want to see me?” She asks again.

He wraps his arms around his knees, stares at the floor.

"I...I don't know, T." His voice is thick, heavy, all the weight from months of not talking about anything that matters pressing down on his vocal chords. "I just...I meant what I said, earlier. I miss you. And I know I'm fucked up right now. Believe me, I know. Danny tells me every chance he gets. But no matter what I do, no matter how hard I black out, I can't stop missing you."

There’s more silence while Tessa eyes him like she’s trying to figure out what he wants to hear from her now.

“I’m…,” she begins, another start at the sentence she won’t utter. He is prepared for it to fade into oblivion like it has before and is equally ready to let it go when she surprises him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into the dark and he looks at her. Just in time to see her choke on a sob and bury her face in her hands.

And suddenly it doesn't matter that she broke his heart, possibly for the rest of his life. It doesn't matter that he's been so angry with her he can't breathe. It's instinct, always, to wrap his arms around her, hold her cradled against his chest.

"Shhhh, Tess, it's okay, it's gonna be okay," he promises. They are lies, every one, but if she needs to hear them, that's what he'll say. Somewhere in the back of his mind, “Hallelujah” starts playing. Because here they are, unraveling in a church. The church he thought he might want to marry her in, debris and all. And because…

  _Well, there was a time when you let me know_

_What's really going on below_

_But now you never show that to me do ya?_

_But remember when I moved in you_

_And the holy dove was moving too_

_And every breath we drew was Hallelujah_ _._

(Years later, he will watch Chiddy skate to this song and he will still want to cry. He’ll fight back tears for his friend’s final skate on Olympic ice, and for the memories they all share, and for the thought of the two of them, sitting that dank little church, side by side and yet alone.)

Tessa melts into his arms from muscle memory alone and she wants to weep, does weep. It’s just so hard, everything these days. Because she loves him. She loves him and she wants him and it doesn’t make sense to her why she said no to him those couple of months ago and yet still knows she can’t say yes either. And Ryan doesn't mean anything to her, not in any real capacity, but now Kaitlyn means a lot to Scott, and it’s all just wrong and askew and foreign.

"I messed it all up," she says, so quiet she isn't even sure he hears.

But he does. He's been waiting to hear eight words from her for _months_ now, so many days he's lost count, and he just got five of them. He pulls her a little closer, presses a kiss to her hair.

"I messed up too," he confesses, and one hand strokes over her back. "It wasn't just you."

“But I told you...” she stops herself short from challenging his damn chivalry, taking blame that isn’t his, because she can’t tell him what she was about to. She can’t tell him that when he almost screamed at her that night to tell him she didn’t love him, she lied.

He swallows hard, fights the shivers that have started to wrack his bones. It's not that cold, not really, but he's so scared. Scared that she'll say something to end what little is still between them, scared she'll walk out of his life forever, scared he can't make it without her.

"Told me what?" he whispers. It's the bravest damn thing he's ever done.

“No,” she says. “I’m just going to make everything worse”. _Make_ you _worse_ , is what she leaves hanging in the air unsaid, but he hears it anyway.

"No, Tess," he says, pulling away from her. He puts a hand under her chin, makes her meet his eyes. "No. You don't get to do that, not now. It's already been _worse_. I'm fucking drunk off my ass four nights out of seven just so I can sleep, my mother cried the last time she saw me, and my brothers will hardly look me in the eye. I'm fucking _living_ worse.”

And look, he knows that’s not exactly fair but neither is dangling something, something real there right in front of him, and then not telling him.

“Tell me,” he demands, running his fingertips along her jaw for the brief second he allows himself the touch. He’s hoping that it can still rattle her enough to shake loose whatever she is holding on to.

“I don’t ask you to drink,” she says and there’s a heavy silence for a moment, full of accusations and the possibility of everything crashing and burning. But then that is always there, isn’t it? Especially with how they are lately. And even if it’s kind of unfair to load his budding drinking problem on what she did, it’s also not all the way unfounded. He’ll hate her in a second, she knows it, but how long can they dangle at the edge just above rock bottom? Maybe they just finally have to go there. So she takes a deep breath and lets go, straight off the edge.

“I lied,” she finally says now that the weight of the possible fallout over the wrong remark gets too heavy, when she sees him gear up to tear her apart over just how much she is to blame for him spiralling (she knows, goddammit, she knows). “And I shouldn’t tell you this because I have nothing else for you. I can’t give you any more. I still don’t know who I am, what I want, I can’t say yes to anything.” She stares blankly ahead, the moment of truth upon her. “But I lied. When you wanted me to tell you if I loved you...like that. I lied.”

It fucking sucks to admit you’ve been lying, especially if you’ve been lying for months, but she has been living with the guilt of that for too long. She’s far more ashamed for telling him she did not love him than she is for telling him she can’t be with him the way he wanted, the way they tried to be after the trainwreck that was Sochi. She hadn’t seen any other way out then, no way that he would accept that she did not want a relationship with him while she was admittedly in love with him all the same.

She’d believed he would never have let it go, so she had lied. But she had been wrong. She’d led him to believe a truth that wasn’t true, and she owed him more than that. If she owed anybody in the world anything, it was him. If she lied to the world about them sleeping together through the years that was one thing...but to lie to Scott, and for selfish reasons? He doesn’t deserve that and she is better than that. She should be better than that. And it’s time he knows it. Even if he might despise her for it.

Her thoughts may be whirling, but Scott can't breathe. He literally can't breathe. As her words sink in, he begins gasping, choking, and he realises in some dim corner of his brain that he's started to hyperventilate. Everything's starting to go fuzzy and dim at the edges of his vision, and in the background he can hear her panicked voice— _Scott...Scott! You're scaring me, please, calm down. Please._

But he can't. He _can't_. She lied, and the hell he's been through since has been for nothing. Every time his mother's face fell in disappointment and a knife of guilt sliced through his belly, every time Charlie yelled at him at 4:00 AM after hauling him out of some bar, every time he touched Kaitlyn and thought of _her_. It meant _nothing._

“Did you take something?” Tessa asks, of all things, as her little hands close around his shoulders, trying to contain him when she really, really can’t right now.

He can barely hear her as he fights for air, but the very idea of it makes him _furious_ , the anger layering on top of the panic until he's shaking horribly, gasping and coughing, tears leaking unbidden out of the corners of his eyes. Yes, he drinks, all right, and too much at that, but he’s not a fucking drug addict. Whatever he might or might not try out at a party here and there sure as hell doesn’t make its way into a random Tuesday night. What the fuck? Who does she think he is? Who does she think he’s becoming?

“ _Fuck_ , no,” he manages, and doubles over his knees, his body betraying him. He can't hide this, can't hide how badly he's hurting. Not from her, not from anyone. He wishes it were drugs, he wishes he had a nose full of cocaine to give him some illusion of control at least. Of feeling like he has any hope of getting on top of this situation.

She rocks away from him, scared for him and a bit of his reaction. She says his name, careful and soft like a prayer, not wanting to set him off.

“I told you I would make it all worse.”

She is always right, he should know by now. She hates herself. She was right to have told him the truth but the price is appropriate for the lie. And it feels like death.

Scott scrambles for her hand, desperate suddenly for her to touch him. If she'd just hold him, let their breaths sync, he could come out of this awful clutch of panic. She could be his downer, his mellower. And he hasn’t done drugs, doesn’t have any handy in any case. He hopes to God he won’t get into any bad habits somewhere down the line because he knows that he could get his hands on them with little effort. He prays that he won’t get a taste for forcing himself to cope chemically, afraid that maybe he’ll fall down a pit he can see lurking somewhere in the darkness around him that might beckon while he is unable to resist. Resist, specifically, the temptation of feeling artificially good. Or nothing, which might even be better.

But then again, when has Tessa been anything other than an addiction for him, too? When has she ever not wound up looking like salvation? Even if she was the reason for his pain. Maybe that’s why he’s so hard on the drink now...he’s started developing his addictive personality from the ripe age of eight, when he first got hooked on _her_ , on the feeling of being needed by her, of mattering to her. He’s got no hope in hell without her, never had. He will always crave her. Always need her.

Or, at the very least, he'll need some methadone to get through the day, be that be beer or parties or Kaitlyn. Everything he’s done those past few months has been stuffing the hole she left when she walked out of his door, trying to find something that could fill the void. And that Tessa-shaped hole is overflowing with booze, over-acted affection for another, and a ton of bad decisions, but it still feels empty. He can’t replace her. Even when he tries so hard to.

" _Please_ ," he begs, hoarsely, still shaking so badly the word comes out in fits and starts.

Next thing he knows, without having anticipated it at all, the universe takes pity on him as she takes his hand and then draws him in. He is instantly boneless, following hungry and desperate, clamouring for her closeness and comfort like a dying man. He grabs her where she slots against him, half drawing her into his lap and then her face lands in his neck and his in hers. Her hair is fragrant and flowing open and long, so long he could drown in it and he would, he wants to. He is about to draw the world’s longest breath, inviting the calm and deliverance she offers, when her lips connect with his neck and pucker. She’s kissing him, he realises with a start and the world stops.

He jolts at the touch first and dissolves into her a second later, grabs her too hard and holds her too tight. He doesn’t care. She’s there, in his arms, her mouth on his skin, her lungs rising and falling against his, breathing in time with him. It takes a minute, but finally his pulse starts to calm, and it's only then that he figures out that he's crying, tears staining the shoulder of her jacket. He barely notices how Tessa climbs fully on him, working her legs onto either side of his hips but instead of going further, she stills, huffing out a breath and hooks her chin over his shoulder, panting from the effort of restraining herself. They’re always so close to losing it. Even now with all the lies and all the hurt, they’re dangling on the edge of the abyss, just so short of falling into each other and never getting out.

It doesn't matter. He takes her face from his neck, cups it in both hands, his eyes red-rimmed and still watery, holding on for dear life.

"Just once more, T," he whispers, pleading, begging. Every sense of self-respect, fidelity or pride has floated away, dissolved into the moonlight streaming in through the coloured windows. "One more time. Just...something to remember, yeah?"

His voice doesn't even sound like it's his anymore, just a thick rasp in the darkness.

She shakes her head against his, touching her forehead to his, trying so hard to keep it together.

“I can’t,” she whispers, it would be unforgivable, they can’t go down that path again. “I won’t...And you’re...not well. I love you too much for that.” She repeats it, because it’s long overdue: “I love you, okay? In every way.”

She hates herself too, for feeling this but not being able to give him anything more. For being the roadblock not only to her own but _his_ happiness...she can’t forgive herself for that. She wants him as much as ever but that’s ingrained in her DNA; she doesn’t know how much of that is even real or just trained into her system. If her body is just programmed to respond to his from years and years of revolving around each other. How can she do this to him, to them? Again? After all they’ve been through?

Scott doesn't listen. When has he ever listened? God knows he didn't when it mattered most. He didn't listen to what she said, only to what he thought that meant, and he gave her a stupid ultimatum. And then he followed through, too hurt and proud to think straight, and got himself another girl in a heartbeat without once thinking in the interim what that might mean for him. For them.

Quickly, fast as a thief in the night, he leans forward and presses his lips to hers, a fleeting brush of a kiss. It's not long enough. It'll never be enough. But it's something, to tide him through the nights alone, or not quite alone, in his bed, nothing on his brain but Tessa.

"I'm sorry," he says, before she has a chance to yell at him for breaking the rules. "I had to. I had to do it to remember, T, I _had_ to.”

Just one last kiss. And another, because he is weak and she’s not pulling away when he leans in again, high on desperate hope and blind need.

Tessa kisses him back even though she knows in her heart that she shouldn’t.

“We _shouldn’t_ ,” she tells him. Daring him to change her mind. Secretly, shamefully wanting him to, knowing full well it’s wrong.

“I don’t care,” he says, the three most dangerous words on the planet, and then his mouth fits over hers, hot and hungry, and he slides one hand up into her hair, fists it at the nape of her neck, just the way she likes. He _knows_ her, knows her better than anyone, and he’s going to use that to his full advantage for this tiny window of grace that has been given to him.

Tessa resists, depleting her resources of self-restraint by the minute. She wants to give in to temptation but her head screams at her furiously to snap out of it.

"What about what you said?" she asks him, once she has managed to pry herself off of his lips and thinks of that terrible night at the end of April when she asked him to stop trying to be together, when she asked for space and time and he told her that if she walked out of his door, she needn’t bother coming back. And then, the _pièce de résistance_ , if nothing else is: “What about Kaitlyn?"

" _I don't care_ ," he repeats, fiercely, his hand wrapped around the back of her neck. "I haven't touched you in five goddamn months, T, do you really think I give a damn about anything else right now?!”

“You said this would never happen again,” she challenges. “If I left. And I did.”

"Well, you weren't the only one who lied, then," he says, sounding almost bitter. "I can't just...stop. Do you have any idea how many nights I couldn’t sleep thinking of this? Just this, just kissing you, just holding you one more time off the fucking ice? Where it’s real?"

"What about Kaitlyn?" Tessa repeats gravely, unrelenting.

He huffs out a breath, so caustic he's surprised it doesn't burn his mouth.

"She's not you," he says simply, which is the awful, horrible truth. Kait is wonderful, smart and funny and honest, and if he were anything other than the lovelorn bastard he is, he'd be the happiest guy on the planet to be dating her. But that's just the problem. He's not. He’s an asshole and he’s not in love with the woman he should be. "She can't ever be you,” he says, not caring a bit that he sounds equal parts dramatic and pathetic. “You've ruined me, Tess. I'm fucking messed up without you."

"That's exactly what I mean," she says. They're each other's ruin, they’re gonna rip and tear at each other until there’s nothing left. "Nothing's changed. I'll just hurt you more. I have nothing to give you."

She rolls her hips into him anyway, twisting her fingers into his hair, scratching his scalp. Her body does what it wants to do, all on its own.

"Then hurt me," he whispers into her skin, his mouth hovering over her collarbone, her cheeks, her temple. "Do whatever to me, Tess, I don't care, just don't leave. Please...don't leave me."

If he could just stop saying her name like it's his lifeline, like it's honey dripping from his lips. Maybe then she could stop herself from kissing him again, but as it is, she can't. The way he says her name is like a spell, beckoning, weakening her, unraveling what little sense she still has left. When they kiss again, he all but moans into her mouth, the sound like relief in a whimper, but he still manages to shuffle beneath her, struggling for purchase on her body and she can tell he wants to move more, get more in control, to bend her to his desire for as long as she’ll let him. And so it's no big surprise when he lifts her easily and rises with her wrapped around him, turning them, taking two confident strides over to the old altar and props her onto it, wedging himself between her thighs where she now sits.

And all through this, he hasn't stopped kissing her, he's found his way blindly, not dropping her, not even pausing. He never dropped her, not once in her life. Now that their career is over, she can thank him for that maybe. If there is ever the right time.

"I don't _want_ to hurt you," she pleads. Unable to stop touching him at all. _But I will_ , she thinks. _I will hurt you, you wonderful, good man._

"Just stay with me," he murmurs, his hands skimming under the edge of her shirt, touching the bare skin of her stomach for the first time in months. "Let me...God, let me, Tess, _please_."

He clouds everything, his touches blurring every line, like she knew they would. She breathes his name, so close to his face that the heat of her hitching breath ricochets from his cheeks back to her. They're slipping, she can feel it. He is already tipped over, he has lost his head, like an addict ready for the fix, for the sniff of the powder or the push of the needle. She doesn't fare much better, if she’s honest. She doesn’t have many addictions but he is her biggest, the one she can’t kick no matter how loudly she tells herself she has to.

"A kiss," she mutters against his lips, giving way, giving in just a little. "Just a kiss." As if they aren’t kissing, as if her lips aren't wet and bruised and puffy from it already.

"Just a kiss," he echoes, frantic, and then subverts her expectations by pushing the collar of her blouse aside and mouthing the curve between her shoulder and her neck. "Just kissing, Tess, yeah."

She makes a noise in the back of her throat, something high and needy, and his arms tighten around her. She still feels so small within them, despite all her muscle and grit. So small, like he could put her in his pocket and carry her away, like the old song from when he was a kid.

"God, the feel of you," he whispers into her neck, just below her ear, and she strokes his hair back, tangles her fingers in it in a way that seems like she isn’t even aware she’s doing it and his eyes half-close with the pleasure.

"Don't talk," she begs him. "Please."

She will lose all control if he keeps talking like that. He's always been so good with words, he could completely undo her with a string of syllables.

“Tessa,” he mumbles, and for once her name doesn’t sting his throat as he says it. “Tess, _baby_ , just let me...” He never finishes this sentence, doesn’t know what he wants her to let him do exactly, only that it’s pretty much _everything_. But that’s too big for this moment. So he just hovers his fingers over the top button of her blouse, waiting for permission. For mercy. Just a little mercy, just enough to get him through.

"No," she shakes her head and it's taking all she has. Everything she is, her whole strength. And if dealing with compartment syndrome was hard, this is harder. So much harder. She’s hot all over, sweaty and buzzing and he’s too close. He’s inside her, even when he’s not.

"Scott, we can't," she reiterates. "Just...just kiss me. One more time. And then I'll take you home."

And then they will pretend this never happened, like they used to nearly all their lives when they crossed their lines together. Stupidly hurling themselves into obliteration headfirst, led by their hearts and shunning their heads.

"Just one more?" Scott asks, and then it registers. She's taking him home. A defiant little bubble of hope swells in his chest. "Okay, Tess," he says, obediently. "Just the one."

He moves in, to make it worth her while, hauls her into him and bites at her mouth, buries one hand in her hair and grips her ass hard with the other, grinding his ridiculously hard length against her with a vengeance. Let her see what she’s still doing to him after all this time.

"I want you so fucking bad," he hisses into her ear as he moves on to suck the skin of her neck into his mouth, makes her writhe against him, helplessly bucking her hips against him for friction. "I always want you. Every fucking night, Tess, I want you. Just so you know."

Tessa drowns, in his lips first and after they’ve moved on, in his words. As they echo in her ear, about how much he wants her, she doesn't wait though to slip off the altar, _can't_ wait. Because if she spends a second longer in his arms listening to him tell her what he spends his nights thinking about, she will let him fuck her in a mouldy old church right where some of his cousins used to assist the Sunday services. Rushing, she pushes herself down rigorously, sliding against his body in her effort, until she is on her full feet, small again.

She gazes up at him, just after her eyes flitted down to his straining jeans, to what she’s felt just a moment before. Him, ready and promising. His eyes promise her the rest, what his body can’t. More than lust and passion. They promise love, the unconditional kind, the kind he meant to withhold from her all those months ago. It’s all there now. He’s lost to her and the scope of what that makes her feel reaches from terror to ecstasy.

"You gonna take me home?" he whispers, low, and feels the shiver run through her. He reaches for her hand, twists his fingers around hers, leans over to press a kiss to her shoulder.

"Scott," she warns him and pries her fingers loose from his, desperate to create some distance and walks ahead, not waiting to see if he follows. The loss of him all around her is already starting to feel like someone pried her entire skin off. She just shot herself ten years into the past, falling open for him. Reverting back to a much younger Tessa, one that ached for him every second of every day.

"I'm driving you home," she says resolutely, straining against herself. "And then I'm driving _myself_ home."

He feels the sudden absence of her like a blow, so cold that he thinks he's gone numb for a moment.

"I want to show you the house," he says, which is an incredibly stupid thing to say. It's a wreck, worse than a wreck, and he has no idea why Tess would want to set foot in it. Still, now that he’s said it, he finds that he _wants_ her to see it, wants to imagine what she'd look like in it when it's finished, imagine the sunlight streaming through the windows of the dining room onto her silken hair, wonder what she'd look like drinking coffee in his kitchen. He'll never get to see it, not for real, but tonight he can imagine and it'll be enough. 

"Okay," she says, unable to find it in herself to argue, to deny him this. Even if it spells danger, what with the way all she already seems to want to do is fling herself back into his arms once more. When he offers his hand again to help her out of the old door, she sighs at the touch and she doesn't think he misses it.

Scott does notice, fights the urge to press her back against the door and fall to his knees in front of her, remind her with his mouth and hands and breath that he loves her, he'll always love her, that she'll own him until his dying day. But suddenly he wants to have her in his house, in the place where he’d wanted to build a home for them and that sits purposeless now that she’s left him. He still wants her spread out over his mattress, messy as his place is, so she can see what he bought it for. So she _knows._ Already feverish in anticipation, he plans to seduce her, to break her resolve, wants to taste her with the smell of sawdust all around him and break apart to the sound of her moans filling his empty rooms. He can wait to get her there now. It’s not much longer.

He lets go of her once they're outside and Tessa catches his eye, sees the twinkle in them, sees what he's thinking, what his plan is. She needs to be careful, to draw on her last reserves if she can. To fight, even if that seems silly and pointless at this point. _This is never going to go away, is it,_ she thinks, over and over again on their way to the car. She asks him this too, pensively, as they pull the doors closed, encasing them in stale, used air and studies his face, turning the ignition.

"Shhh," he says, reaches over and rubs his thumb over her lower lip, his fingers crooked under her chin. "Just...let me show you, before you go asking the hard questions, Tess. Please."

And, for once, she does as he asks and puts the car in drive, winds her way through the streets in silence and lets him play with her hair.

Tessa wants to say so many things. About how she has missed riding in a car with him, how weird it is that he's not driving, about how she still feels like there is a canyon between them and she doesn't know how to bridge it. About how the heat from just his fingers twisting strands of her hair together and apart so close to her neck is making it hard to focus on the road. How her heart hurts, how she loves him, how she wants him and how she has no idea what that means for her future. Only that she still can't promise anything. Not even that she'll still feel this way tomorrow. (She will. And maybe knows it already. But she won't admit that. Not for a while.) It’s a damn mess, him and her and she doesn’t see the end.

Scott lets her stew, lets the thoughts whirl round and round in her head. Once, he would've insisted that she tell him, pry them out of her one slow strand at a time. Now, he just waits, twines her hair around his fingers and smiles just a little when his thumb brushes against her neck and her breath hitches.

"This is it," he says quietly, after just about four minutes on the road when she's right in front of the tiny junction where a dirt road makes a left and leads another 300 metres to his house. They ride through the pitch darkness, no street lights illuminating the path there and end up in front of his house where she puts the car in park next to his. She looks surprised at what little she can make out in the moonlight.

"That's...," Tessa starts and doesn't really know how to go on. It's beautiful bones. But, dear Lord, is it _bones_. "It's lovely." She settles on. Still she can't stop herself from adding. "But it's a construction site." And after a moment, once her eyes have grown used to the darkness and more of the scope of the disarray in front of her reveals itself, she adds: "You live here?"

How did she not know it was _this_? How had Alma not told her, or Cara? Or anybody...that he was living in a literal ruin?

“Sometimes,” he flushes and grins a little, sheepishly. "It's a work in progress," he says, and even though he doesn't fully want her to see just how in progress it is, he hopes that she can find the possibilities in it.

It took him months to realise, but he bought it for her. That impulsive decision, just weeks after Sochi, to take half his savings and sink them in a fixer-upper (and that's a generous term for it) - all that impulse had been solely because he could see a sudden vision of her and three kids on the back lawn. He hadn’t told her about it then, because somewhere below the clamouring for her with fingers and feelings alike in those precious few months after the Olympics, when they tried being together for real, he had already felt her pulling away, being unsure. He hadn’t wanted to scare her off with such a huge thing...a house for them. A home to raise their kids in. It’s probably best that he didn't. Otherwise she would have bolted a lot sooner, he thinks.

The house is sitting between a mess of weeds and brambles right now, but he could see it, clear as day, when it would be all fixed and made up - Tess in white, three little ones running around her, and he didn't think twice, just went down to the bank and made the deal. The house was his the next day. Not much has changed since then, because he insisted on doing most of the reworks by himself and with his brothers and so it was a slow process, tedious and not helped by his weekends spent at Joe’s Bar or Molly’s.

Right now, from outside, it still looks like the day he signed on the contract and the most spectacular thing about the property is the fact that out here, you can see every single star on a clear night like this. Tessa notices that too and so he has to grab her softly by the wrist to lead her to the front door as she gazes upwards, stumbling a little in awe. She only levels her head when the sky disappears from view as they step under the roof of the wrap-around porch.

She smiles up at him.

"So, you're gonna give me the tour?"


	2. and every breath we drew was hallelujah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let it not be said that Tessa and Scott learn their lessons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are floored by all the kind and wonderful responses!  
> Please be aware that the next chapter has about as much angst as the rest and double the dirty things. We mean it, this is not safe for work (unless absolutely no one can see your screen!)
> 
> Golden_Ticket takes the blame for the more explicit smut, burning_brightly for all the magic and pretty much 80% of the pain, so if your heart hurts it's on her and if your loins are aflame...well, G_T will take those complains.

The first time she is inside his house, he leads her through the hallway, their steps creaking on the floor boards. She is hardly surprised that there is no light but that of his cell phone, and what little it illuminates looks like a before-picture from a house remodelling TV-show.

 

"I think you're gonna have to paint it in words for me a little," she jokes, at both the lack of light and the lack of actual “room” established and hopes to maybe hear him laugh a bit, just once before she needs to leave.

 

He chuckles, softly, his eyes already adjusted to the darkness, and then grabs her hand with his free one and spins her around, glorying in her little squeak and the soft laughter, sweeter than he's heard in a long time.

 

"What are you _doing_?" she breathes as he turns her out, still laughing, and then he pulls her back into him, lays the cell phone down on his half-done kitchen counter to cast its light wider into the room.

 

"Just this," he murmurs, and kisses her, slow and steady and bright as the dawn. He could do this forever, spending millenia wrapped up in her and never miss a thing but she pulls away after a moment, lays her head in the crook of his shoulder and breathes in.

 

"You can't keep doing that," she says and he can tell she is gunning for resolute, but it just sounds unsure and a bit sad. "There are no more kisses after the last kiss."

 

Despite her words, she still takes a _long_ moment until she takes a step back from him and drops his hand.

 

"Show me around?" she asks, maybe just to distract him, maybe to give her body something to do other than pulse with want for him, like he knows it does. He can feel the electricity running through her, as pronounced as he can feel it in himself. He _knows_ her.

 

"Hmmm," he rumbles, precisely because he does know, and wraps his arms around her waist from behind as she tries to walk away from him once again. "It doesn't count as the last kiss when you're just extending it. I have at least twelve rooms. We can extend this for a while."

 

He doesn't know why he's teasing like this, not when they should be serious, not when he's still aching beneath it all, but there's something in this moment, being able to _play_ like they haven't in forever, that makes something deep down in his soul knit back together again.

 

"Twelve rooms? You're full of shit," she scoffs, and takes a couple of steps forward, with him still enclosing her in his arms, trudging along. "Where have you hidden those?"

 

He pulls her closer, making her immobile, brushes a kiss to her neck, nips at her earlobe, sways back and forth with her in his arms. She can’t keep this up forever. She wants him, she can’t keep up the act and he knows it in his bones. _Persistence_ is the word of the hour and he has it tattooed on his heart. It’s his single-minded focus.

"I'm counting the half-bath, the garage, the walk-in closet...don't discount my rooms, Tessa, that's just mean."

 

She snickers and rests her weight against him. He thinks he might have her now, even as she mumbles a sarcastic "Uh-huh, sure." She rests her hands over his on her stomach, and he feels something like happiness creeping into him, spreading up from his toes. She’s with him now. Even if she still wants to bolt, she is right there with him in this moment. And she hasn’t been in so, so long. Probably even before she broke up with him.

 

It's a perfect moment, it truly is. And standing there with him in the dark, all soft caresses and those adorable little laughs Tessa hasn't heard in forever, she can see the sun come up in her mind’s eye, sees the place illuminated, fixed and done up, dressed up in nice furniture...no white couch this time, because of the children. And there is a future she doesn't know she wants but imagining it right now feels...like she should have done it a little sooner, a little more thoroughly.

 

But then the moment passes and the night falls back in over her.

 

Because the fact is that they are _still_ two broken people who _still_ can't get their timing and their feelings for each other right and they are not together. And she doesn't know if she wants it like that or not. If she will still love him like this in the morning, all reckless and needy, with no regard for who she is beyond that, the only way she’s ever loved him, at the expense of herself. So she freezes in his embrace, very deliberately, and squeezes his arms.

 

"What are we doing?" She asks him, her voice stripped down to rawness.

 

"Tess," he whispers, his stomach tensing at her tone, "turn around." He can tell where this is going, and he can't. He can't do this with her here, in the house he picked out for her, in the kitchen where he dreamed of laughing as she burned toast and set all his pans on fire. Where he saw himself pour cereal into the waiting bowl of a little girl with pigtails and Tessa’s eyes.

 

The could’ve-been-mother of his child does him the favour of heeding his words, staring up at him curiously after turning to face him again, and he takes advantage of the moment to do what he wanted earlier, sinks to his knees before her and pushes up the hem of her shirt just enough, presses his lips to the soft skin of her stomach and hears her sharp intake of breath.

 

"Be with me," he murmurs, looks up at her like a sinner at confession, hopes against hope that she'll absolve him, lift this burden from his shoulders, even if it's only for tonight. "Be with me, Tess, please."

 

 _Fuck._ What is she supposed to do with this? He just doesn't give up. How is she supposed to resist this, to be the bigger woman, to look out for both of them, if he's so goddamn stubborn? And so good at it. And has such assured and gentle hands, such a good mouth, such a good... _everything._

"I'm trying to save us," she pleads, her hands falling onto his shoulders, shaking with desire she is struggling to keep from overwhelming her entirely. "You will hate me in the morning," she warns him emphatically while she still can. "You'll hate me, Scott."

 

"I won't, I couldn't," Scott hurries out, the words tumbling out of his mouth as a wild sort of hope floods through him. She's not saying no. She hasn't yet said a flat-out _no_. "I've never hated you a day in my life, T," he murmurs, and slowly, so that she has a chance to stop him if she wants, he unbuttons the very bottom button of her tidily pressed shirt, slides his knuckles up under the fabric as he works on the next one. She gasps again, her nails digging into his shoulders, but she doesn't say a thing.

 

The next time she speaks, her jeans are bunched up on the floor around her ankles and Scott hovers there, at the height of her navel, pressing a kiss into her skin. She's already lost but she's still trying. Anything to make sure this doesn't destroy them entirely.

 

"We need rules," she says. "Right now.” She starts making them up as she goes, arbitrary and already useless. “You don't hate me in the morning, that is number one. You don't get mad that I can't...that I don't know what this is, that I can't do it like you want it."

He will hate her anyway, even if he claims he won’t or that he never has. Which is a lie, because she knows he has - not even half a year ago, he had hated her seethingly and with a passion, for breaking his heart and walking away with the pieces.

 

"This doesn't change anything. Between us, right now. I can’t give you...anything more." She continues, trying to be fair, maybe trying to dissuade him at the last moment, still. "And you don't hate me for that either. And we tell nobody.”

 

"Okay," he murmurs. "What else?"

 

"We try not to do it again, after tonight," she decides. Futile as she is already intimately aware that it is. "And you and Kaitlyn...you just be fair to her. When things...move along there, with her, when it gets serious, you have to let me...you have to..."

 

"Don't talk about her," Scott whispers. "That's my only rule, Tess. It's just us tonight. Just you and me."

 

“Fine.” She breathes out, long and hard. "There's just one more thing."

 

He skims his hands over her hips, kisses the dip of her waist sweetly. "My knees are killing me, T. What is it?" he says, trying for a little levity.

 

She looks down at him, smiling briefly, for him more than for the humour and says: "We go into this open-eyed, yeah? We love each other, that’s...that’s a given, right?” She is _in_ love with him, too, hasn’t stopped since the spring but she thinks it’s probably not wise to point this out to him. “But we're not going to be...we're gonna be hurting, eventually. Is that worth it for you? For tonight?"

 

He doesn't answer with words, not right away. Instead he scoops her into his arms, into the first lift they’ve ever learned, and spins her once so he can plop her on the counter and kiss her. Despite everything, there’s a jolt of joy coursing through him, making him feel shockingly light, like he could float in mid-air. She’s gonna _let him_ …

 

"I love you," he whispers as he tugs at the clasp of her bra through her shirt, watches the moonlight filtering in through the windows silver her skin. "I love you, Tess, always will. I can't breathe without loving you. I don’t care about anything else, it’s always gonna be worth it. If we got tonight..." _I can make it a couple months without crashing into the pit_ , he leaves hanging in the air.

 

And he's a fucking sap, sure, but what does he care when Tessa's in his arms, lifting her face to his, and there's such happiness running through him - a dry stream filled with fresh water again, a skeleton come to life. He's _alive_ again, his mouth on her body, her moans in his ears, and the last six months are as nothing, dust blowing away on their joined sighs. He can survive a while longer on this, can live on the methadone after if he gets the real thing tonight. This is so much better than anything he’d expected of getting out of just another evening spent soaking in the desolate loneliness of his purposeless, incomplete home.

 

Tessa’s chest is tight, with want and love and guilt and terror. He is all over her, all around, like artillery fire she has no hope of escaping. This is going to end terribly. She’s going to fuck everything up so badly again and he might say he doesn’t care about that right now but he will. Oh, he will and he will resent her for it. She arches into him, keening and gasping anyway. Stupidly. Kissing him deeply, already feeling the pain waiting for her on the other side of this night. But she can’t hold herself together anymore. She’s lost. She’s been lost from the minute she decided to meet him that night. So to hell with it. If he wants to burn, let them fucking burn.

 

"Do you..." she asks, breathlessly after a while of him decking her skin with kisses, working her out of her top and bra so she she sits on his dusty counter in only her panties. "Do you have a bed?" Which should not be such a reasonable thing to ask of a person who owns a house.

 

Scott laughs at that, full and loud, and he'd forgotten he was capable of that sound. "I have a mattress," he says cheerfully. "If you wanted to tie me to the headboard, T, you're gonna be a little disappointed."

 

(This is only partially a joke. He remembers Worlds in 2013.)

 

"Oh, you're gonna be funny tonight?" She asks him, not that the night will last that much longer...a couple more minutes and dawn will start to creep in. He'll be inside her when the sun rises, that much is clear. She'll see his face hover over her as the light comes back. That thought makes her strangely happy...the thought of seeing his face again when he's buried inside her, in the bright new light of day.

 

"I just want you in my bed, such as it is," he tells her, plucks her from her elevated seat and carries her out of the kitchen, down the hallway, navigating the darkness ably out of habit. "T, you're gonna laugh at me, but you know one of the things I miss most about being with you?"

 

"Eggs and toast?" she suggests.

 

He laughs and nuzzles at her clavicle, sighs for a moment when her fingers twine into his hair.

 

"The way my sheets always smelled when I was with you," he says as he sets her down on her feet so she can sink onto his poor excuse for a bed, watches as she lies on her back, arms over her head, so open and vulnerable that he could fall apart from that alone. "Every time you were in my bed, even in the hotels, my pillow smelled like you. That strawberry shampoo. Fucking killed me, every time you left, because I could still smell you everywhere. Like you'd never really gone. Like you—"

 

He stops talking, worried suddenly that this is too much, that she might be convinced he's gone psychotic in his retired state. Because she doesn’t say anything, her face is completely unmoving and it makes him nervous. Did he manage to fuck it up now, when she’s already pretty much naked in his bed?

 

Tessa feels her face twist into a frown, not because it was a bad thing he said, but because it was the opposite and she actually has a hard time trying not to cry. Just like that, she's so close to breaking open. What the fuck is she doing with her life? And with him...and her future? Unable to process and more than anything unwilling to ponder what mess she has gotten herself into, she props herself back up and then wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him close. He follows pliantly, and gasps when she bites down on his earlobe hard before half-hissing: "Can you be rough?"

 

He growls and his hands clasp around her tightly. "Please don't be sweet,” she whispers. “I'm gonna break if you're sweet."

 

She's never needed anything more from him than this. And she has always told him that he won't break her, won't ever break her. But tonight he could. She feels more naked than ever before in front of him and just hopes that he’ll hear her.

 

He disentangles himself from her after that last thing she said, scrambling backwards, kneeling on the mattress, and looks at her in something akin to shock. She's wanted it rough before, but she's never told him like _this_. She's never once said that she could break, in all their life together. He doesn't know what to do. Everything in him, every instinct he has, is telling him to go slow, to take her in soft and gentle, one moment spilling after another like drops of gold. But this is what she wants, or what she says she wants, and he is torn between the two.

 

"I need this," she whispers hoarsely. "I can't..." A deep breath. "I can't take it," she confesses. "Gentle...tonight. I don't deserve it."

 

He frowns at her. "Don't deserve what?" he asks, confused. Surely she can't mean…

 

"You," she says in a small voice. And pauses. "Being sweet."

 

"Ohh," he breathes as realisation floods him. " _Tessa_. No." He reaches for her, skims his hands over her calves, over the scars that caused them such pain six years ago. "If anything, it's the other way around," he confesses, eyes fixed on her shins. "You...no, Tess, never, it's never gonna be like that."

 

"Please, Scott," she pleads. She means it, she will break into a million pieces if he's gentle with her, those butterfly-feather-touches will rip her flesh apart. She needs his grip and his muscles and his abandon. She needs his hand clasped around her throat and to see his face twist into a hard grimace when he pushes himself into her as deep and as hard as he can. She needs the kind of love he makes where he loses himself in it, where he frowns from intense focus and fixes her with stern, determined eyes. Where he puts her where he needs her and knows what she needs in turn, before she does herself. Yeah, if he were sweet with her tonight and reassuring and looked at her with those eyebrows arched up, like she's precious, she would die. She might actually die.

 

But he shakes his head at her. She only catches a glimpse of it before he dives in, covering her, kissing her slow and slots between her legs, rolling his body into hers like a soft wave. He only breaks the connection to reach behind him and drag his sweatshirt and shirt over his head and toss it aside aimlessly. When he leans back down again, Tessa anticipates the kiss that’s coming and bites his lip. Hard. He is not giving her what she asked for. He is being gentle and languid and she can’t have that. He’s not rattled by her teeth though, he just takes it in stride, sighs into it and so she tries another approach, in moving her teeth to his neck.

 

She bites down until he winces in pain and tries to snap his head away from her but her hands fly up, holding his head to keep him there. This ends with him catching both her wrists, snagging them into a one-handed grip and pinning them over her head, and _now_ they’re getting somewhere. He glares down at her and she feels something a little like triumph.

 

“Don’t do this,” he hisses. The sky is brightening, casting his squared jaw in a blue-ish hue and she can see the mark on his skin where she bit him already. How is he going to explain this to Kaitlyn?

 

When he clenches his jaw, lying on top of her, Scott can feel the sting of her bite where the skin of his neck is taut and he has to push down a bit of anger at her physically hurting him to coax him, or _force_ him, into manhandling her. She’s trying to play him but she’s not getting him that easy. He watches her gaze land on his neck, on where he’ll be bruising tomorrow and he can hear her thoughts. She’s marked him, and pretty obviously now. Maybe she expects him to retaliate.

 

And yeah, he would like to cover her in bites and hickeys and hell, maybe even leave some crisp handprints on her ass...or to suck bruises into the inside of her thighs, just beside her nipples, everywhere startlingly intimate where Ryan might see and know exactly what she did when she left her house in the middle of the night to go see her skating partner. But he won’t. All he does is slap her thigh once, sharply, chastising her. That’ll make her feel safe, like her plan is succeeding.

 

“Will you be good for me now?” he grumbles into her gasp, and that does the rest. She nods at him, looking smug beneath a flimsy veneer of obedience and he lets go of her hands, lowers himself on her again and then scrapes his teeth over her pulse point, holding her in place with one arm while the other snakes down between their bodies, between her legs to touch her softly, ghosting at first and then with a little pressure, waiting for her to squirm and moan. He’s not going to cave.

 

He is done lying. He loves her, he wants to _make love_ to her, and she won’t get him to fall prey to selfish passion or rash intensity. No, he will take this as slow and as deliberate as he can. He’ll draw it out as much as possible...should they really never do it again, he doesn’t want to miss this chance. To prove to her once and for all that he's here, and he loves her, and any time she wants to doubt that she's going to have to remember the way he touched her as dawn broke over his half-finished house, the way he tore his heart open and laid it bleeding at her feet.

 

He tricked her. Tessa realises this when she lies beneath him and touch by touch works her out of her mind. He’s not rough, he’s not harsh. He lavishes her in attention, making her fall, getting her close to coming while he’s still just pressing his fingers down onto her panties and she cries out eventually. His name, then a curse and then she nearly wails. Why can’t he just take her, rip at her hair and spank her ass pink and red and rut into her until he’s gotten his pleasure and leave her to hate herself in peace? Why does he have to make her sing? To make her heart beat out of her chest like this? Why must he make her love every second of it, so much she already dreads the moment it’s over, so much it takes her breath away?

 

She struggles for some sort of control back, the only way she knows how, by touching him right back. Fiendish and as quick as she can manage, she undoes his belt buckle with one hand, while the other cups him and he shudders on top of her, looking down at her like he is legitimately surprised that she could be wanting to touch him too.

 

He’s so surprised, he doesn’t protest when she pushes his pants and boxer briefs down. So surprised, he helps, even, voluntarily plucking himself off of her for the moment it takes to strip out of the rest of his clothes until he comes back to her, grasping for breath and her hands. He doesn’t have to wait for the latter. She is on him in seconds, taking him into her fist. When she starts moving her hand, pumping up and down once, twice, hard, from the tip to the base, their eyes meet and the look on his face knocks the air right out of her lungs.

 

She touches him like she's desperate, and he can tell even through the damn mind-blowing feeling of having her hand on him again. Like she's been wanting it there for months just like he did, like she needs him nearly as much as he needs her. He knows that's impossible. She doesn't want him, that's the whole point here. She ripped him to shreds in April with not wanting him, and she just told him less than an hour ago that nothing's changed. But when her other hand slides up his body to trace the lines of his chest, her eyes troubled, he doubts. Just a little, just a tiny bit, he starts to doubt all the times she's said that she isn’t sure if she can be with him. It’s enough to make him bite his lip and zero his attention in on her actions, getting harder from the thought just as much as from her fingers.

 

Tessa brings her hand from his chest up to his neck, ghosting her fingertips along the strained lines of his muscles while he rocks into her grip. His eyes are trained on her hand first, then flit up to her face, and _oh,_ that look is still right there. A question, a wonder, his brows furrowed like he wants to figure out what's happening, like he wants to climb into her brain and unearth all of her secrets. So on a whim, she stops, brings her hand up to spit in it, closes her fist around him again and tighter, ups the tempo, adds that twist to her wrist on every pump that he likes so much and tries to make him forget, tries to make him lose himself. (And all those questions.)

 

He gasps and arches into her touch, a flare of heat shooting up his spine. _Jesus_ , fuck.

 

"Fuck, Tess, don't—" he hisses through his teeth, reaching down to grab her wrist and pull her away before he comes all over her hand. "Take it slow, yeah?"

 

She stares up at him like she's never seen him before. “I don't _want_ slow," she says, low and furious and wiggles free of his grip to yank down her underwear, tossing them aside as if to make her point even more clear. "I want you to fuck me. I want you to _take_ me. Why won't you just—"

 

When she nearly shoves him in the chest with how worked up she gets, he grabs her waist and rolls them until she's hovering over him, his hands holding her up like he's done countless times on the ice.

 

"Because I want you to remember," he whispers, lowers her down until she's lying on his chest, his arms wrapped solidly around her, and she breathes out harshly. "I want you to remember this... _me_."

 

It's a good thing they are pressed chest to chest, because for a moment it feels like her ribcage is actually cracking open. But not in the romance novel kind of way. It's in the splatter horror movie kind of way, bones sticking out, everything bleeding out of her in agony and she nearly chokes on a sob that won't come out. He's so stubborn, he's tearing her piece from piece.

 

Her head snaps into its place in the curve of his neck and she tries to calm her breathing, in and out, trying to keep from screaming her lungs out.

 

"It hurts," she says because it's the truth and she has no other words for it.

 

But then again, maybe it is supposed to.

 

He bites down hard on his back teeth against the swelling of his throat, the stinging in his eyes. Fuck, but she had to go and say _that_ , and suddenly he's catapulted back to those awful days of her legs betraying her, the days when she'd fight through hours of pain and finally give in, when she'd whimper _it hurts_ into his neck as he carried her off the ice. It was their code for _I can't take any more_ , how he knew she was done, and every single time, young as he'd been, he'd made sure she was off safely, Marina and Igor and the rest of the world be damned.

 

"Oh, Tess...I don't want it to hurt," he murmurs into her hair, strokes his hands up and down her back, wishes like hell he could take it away, whatever it is that pains her so about him, about the fact that he exists, lives and breathes in this world and wants her. He doesn't know, has never really figured out what it is about him that gives her such pain, and he regrets this with all he has, the not knowing, the inability to just quit being whatever the hell it is.

 

"We can stop," he tells her, even if he doesn’t stop touching her at all, his hands still wandering all over. "We'll stop, Tess, just...I don't want it to hurt. I can...we can get dressed, and I'll take you home, and..."

 

He trails off, not sure what to say next, because he loves her and he wants her and clearly just being here with him is tearing her apart. He has no idea what to do with that.

 

"No," she snaps desperately and digs every fingernail she has into his skin, like claws, keeping him there, like a steak fork, piercing holes into him, making it so he can't get away. He can't leave her now, there's no way, not when he’s tugged at the one string that held her together and is letting her unspool before him without mercy.

 

She moves quicker than he anticipates, getting on her knees, rising on him, aligning them with just a slight twist of her hips and sinks down on him. She bends her upper body, after that initial delicious moment of feeling full and _his_ once more, home and complete, and puts her naked body back flush on his to start moving. And kisses him, hard.

 

"Tess," he whispers when she moves her mouth to his neck, trying to think past the rush of her tightly clasped around him again after such a long time, "what are you...you don’t have to..."

 

She bites his earlobe sharply. "I'm not doing anything I don't want to do, dammit," she says, and she sounds furious but the way she moves, rising and falling against him like a wave, steady and sure, is not angry. He doesn't know _what_ it is, really, except that being inside her again is everything he wants in the world right now, and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to let her go again.

 

He pushes up, just a little, for the sake of hearing her groan. Almost on autopilot, he slides his hands down to cup her ass, making her arch her body, lean out and away from his face so he’s looking at her chest bouncing. God, how he’s missed that sight. And maybe it’s lewd and immature but he’ll never get over it, won’t ever get used of her body shaking when she fucks herself on him, using him to chase her pleasure, it’ll never not make him twitch inside her, craving more, going insane on the visual alone.

 

"I may have dreamed of this," he confesses, just before he slides his tongue around her nipple, because it’s right there and it elicits such beautiful little sounds from the back of her throat. "Sometimes. All the time."

 

The way he rises up to meet her is throwing her back years and years, to nights like these, some less desperate, some possibly more so. All of them memorable. All of them ingrained into her heart. She moves on him, feverishly trying to restrain herself from going overboard, strains upward until she is leaning back, her arms propping her up on his thighs as his hands roam around her body, her chest, her breasts, the apex of her thighs where she rolls her hips into him again and again and he draws circles into her with his thumb, assured and knowledgeable, with just enough gentle pressure to set her flying.

 

She tries to keep watching him, but she can't. That damn look on his face is too much. So she looks up and away and then closes her eyes, trying to feel nothing but that sensation of being one with him, of fully, fairly melting into each other. That stretch of him in her she has missed so much. No one else quite suits her the way he does, no one feels as good, just like that.

 

Merely bobbing up and down on him like they’re teenagers again is breathtaking in and of itself, he wouldn’t even need to do anything more. But he does. He meets her with steady, deep thrusts, holds her hips so he hits the right angle and groans and moans and curses and she scratches what skin of him she can reach, just to cope. _Fuck_ , she’s missed this.

 

Her eyes flutter shut, and he watches the emotions play out over her face. She thinks she's safe with her eyes closed, like the rest of her doesn't betray everything. And he was blind, he was so _fucking_ blind. He may hurt her, and he still doesn't know why, but she loves him. She still loves him. He's seen that look on her face a hundred times or more, that look when she loses herself utterly to the connection between them, the feeling of being together in every way, the sensations he drags out of her with his hands and mouth and words whispered into her skin. She’s loved him this whole time and he should have seen it, should have known.

 

"Tessa," he says, very softly, and reaches to touch her cheek, cups her face in his hands as she rides him, brushes her hair back behind her ears. "Baby. Look at me."

 

He knows she doesn't want to. He knows she's terrified of being truthful with him like this. But he needs to see it, needs to see if he can have a little hope yet.

 

She drags it out as long as she can, keeping in her own world, save from his eyes that see everything, that she can't hide from in moments like these but eventually, she can't stop it from happening. He hits just that spot inside on a shift of his hips and her eyes fly open, connecting with his. She turns her head into his palm, looking for his support, for him to hold her.

 

She bites her bottom lip, hard. And there are the tears she's wanted so hard to keep in. They roll down her cheeks quietly but unceasing. And this is exactly why she wanted him to be rough with her, to fuck her raw and harsh and with no regard for her feelings. Because now that he refused to, she can't hide from the truth of them for him. About how big they are, how imminent and how at once confusing and all-consuming.

 

The second the first tear falls, Scott startles, hips slowing and then stopping entirely, throbbing but motionless inside her.

 

"Fuck, Tess...no," he murmurs, wiping at her cheeks with his thumbs, trying to think through his arousal. He pulls her down against him, cups the back of her head as she sniffs against his shoulder. "T, don't cry, please...baby, tell me what it is and I'll fix it. I swear I'll fix it. Just tell me."

 

She won't answer him, just lies there, body shuddering with her misery, and he wants to claw at his own skin.

 

 _Fuck_ , what has he done? He's been so fucking miserable, and angry, and he's blamed her for so much, but here they are, and apparently all it takes is one tear from her for him to completely fall apart. He can't blame her for a damned thing anymore, would do anything, anything at all to make this better.

 

"What did I do?" he asks finally, because if it's him, then all right. It'll kill him, worse than anything that's been handed to him this entire shitty year, but he'll let her go if that's what is hurting her so badly. He can't do this to her. He won't.

"Nothing," she whispers back, breathing in, moving on him if he won't move in her. "Keep going, baby, please."

 

"What do you want from me?" he asks her and sounds ready to do just about anything. "Tell me."

 

"Make me forget," she breathes. A junkie, asking for her hit.

 

 _Make me forget my name_ , she thinks. _Make me forget that I have no idea who I am. Make me forget that I can't be with you even though I think that might be my only shot at happiness._

 

"Forget _what_?" he says. These days, he doesn't know what she's thinking anymore. He used to know. When they were together 24/7, he could just look at her and know how she felt from the wrinkle between her eyebrows or the way she held her skate guards. But now...now she's closed off, and he hates it. He can't read her.

 

He rolls them over, hovers over her propped up on one hand, brushes his mouth over her stubborn little chin and the tip of her nose and the dark wings of her eyebrows.

 

"What do you want to forget?" he whispers, and moves in her, just a little. She hooks her legs around his hips, her mouth falling open with the sensation.

 

"Everything. Tomorrow," she says once she has found her voice again. She's completely his in this moment, she wants him nowhere else. "Who we are, what this is. Everything...but us. Scott, please."

 

Honestly, there's a part of him, a very strong part, that wants to pull away from her, put on his clothes, get in his car and just drive. She has no right, he thinks heavily, no right to lie here in his bed and kiss him and tell him she wants to forget everything but them. _She_ was the one who didn't want him, who didn't want _them_ , and he grits his teeth at the memory. And now...now she wants to use him, and then she'll walk away and go back to fucking Ryan Semple and pretend this never happened.

 

But there's an obstinate little corner of him that won't let him go, that makes him drive his hips forward and rock into her while she looks up at him, wide-eyed and pleading. He weaves the fingers of one hand into her hair, holds her steady while he shifts forward to kiss her, and the change in angle makes her keen against his mouth. He’s not done though, instead of continuing to rut into her just so (like he could and she’d still come), he grabs her leg, hikes it over his shoulder and grabs her hip and the back of her head at once, pulling her harshly towards him.

 

"You don't get to forget, T," he murmurs, pulling out of her almost entirely. "I can't forget.” He pushes back in, slowly, and twists her hair in his grip, pulling it back to expose her pale neck. “And I'm not letting you forget either."

 

And then he underlines his point with steady thrusts, pulls her face close to his to look down at her, and he hopes like hell that she can see every single emotion in his eyes. He's not fucking letting her walk away again and take a piece of his soul with her. If she wants to go back to that douchebag and pretend she's happy with something so meaningless, pretend like she doesn't love him, then fine. But he'll make damned sure she remembers that he loves _her_.

 

He loves her. She knows that. She loves him too. And he'll hate her in the morning when she leaves, maybe even earlier. But in that moment, she chooses to let it go. He loves her _now._ That's enough to feel safe to let herself unravel. So she does.

 

She throws her head in his grip and holds him tighter as the day fully breaks, his face clear and sharp in the pink morning light, frowning and tense. She stares back into his eyes and peels the layers of her armour back. All the walls she put up to protect herself...and to protect him from her. They're gone now. He's got her now. He gets to have her now. He'll curse her for it before the dawning day is over. But it is what it it is. She moans, freely, vocalising without shame how he makes her feel and keeps her eyes on his, steadily, hungrily. In turn, he gives her what she’s wanted all night, which is abandon. His face contorts into that angry, passionate grimace and he lets go. He exhales on a loud moan and fucks her, hard and hot and relentless, like it’s the last time.

 

Thank the gods for the sun rising, because he sees it the second it happens, knows what she's doing, and _this_ , this is all he wanted when he trudged over to that dank church in the middle of the night. He wants her, wants all of her, and not just for a brief moment, but right now he'll take what he can get. She drops her walls, looks at him without a single shred of her usual armour, and he's lost. Utterly lost.

 

"I want you to remember," he grits out, speeding up his tempo, pushing her back into the mattress hard, his hands playing over her body with all the knowledge of six years with her to guide him. He wants to say what needs saying, even if talking is hard as fuck. Because she feels so good, drenched and tight and moaning like it’s the best fucking sex of her life. But he’s got a point to make, beneath all of that. Several actually, so he grinds out the words, hoping they’ll make sense over how senseless she is making him.

 

"You...remember, T...remember this, remember how...fuck, this, right now, how I feel inside you,” he struggles to be coherent, to keep his head on straight. “Me, baby, nobody else. Every fucking day, every time you get in bed with him, you have to remember what it's like with me."

 

He drives her to the brink, calculates every breath from years’ worth of experience, every movement timed without having to think about it, like muscle memory, like choreo that he's practiced over and over until it's perfected. He bends down, bites at her collarbone, her shoulder, draws the skin of her neck between his teeth. He wants to leave _evidence_ of what they did here tonight, something she’ll have to explain to fucking Semple when she gets home, a visible reminder that they belong to each other. She can shower him away, delete his texts and screen his calls, but this - this, she’s stuck with for days on end.

 

She cries out his name, and it’s like something snaps inside him.

 

“Ahh, _dammit_ ,” he hisses. “Who’s fucking you now, Tess?” He’s wild, knows that his eyes will be blown out and insane right now but she stares him down, just as crazed. “Who’s fucking you, baby?”

 

“Hnnngh,” is her only reply and he drives himself farther into her, harder, faster. It’s not good enough.

 

“Say it,” he orders, losing it a little bit.

 

“You are,” her voice comes out shaky, cracking in time with his rapid thrusts. “ _You’re_ fucking me.”

 

“Who else fucks you like that?” he asks sharply and he knows jealousy is not a good look on him, but Tessa always loved it regardless.

 

“No...nobody,” she whimpers, and looks up at him with eyes so wide, so dark, the pupils dilated so that the green of her irises has nearly disappeared.

 

He stops, holds himself shaking inside her, and closes his eyes. It would be easy right now, so easy to let himself go, let all the anger and jealousy and pain loose just like she wanted him to. And he determines right then and there that he won’t make it that easy for her. She wants this, wants him angry and passionate and rough. Too bad. She’s going to have to deal with him exactly the way he is tonight...open for her, and a little bit desperate.

 

He brings her hands to her face, cups her cheeks and runs his thumbs over the delicate bones.

 

“Remember that,” he whispers, and moves in her, slowly, agonizingly slowly. “You can get anyone in your bed you want, Tess, I know that.”

 

He moves again, dragging it out while her jaw clenches under his fingertips.

 

“But I’m the only goddamn one who loves you like this, who can _ever_ love you like this,” and he hears the breath tear through her throat like a sob. His words are clear now, despite the lack of focus due to his...circumstances. Because this is _important._ “We belong to each other, and you know it. And you can go back to fucking Semple if you want, but you’d better damned well remember that the only man you fall apart for like this is _me_.”

 

She blinks at him, bites her lip, and something crumbles in her expression.

 

“Scott... _please_ ,” she whispers.

 

It’s all he needs.

 

Triumphant and a bit unhinged, he snaps down, kisses her cheek, the shell of her ear, and pushes her over the edge, thumbing down on her, pushing in deep and hard against just that spot at just that angle, single-minded and determined. He keeps the pace and intensity as she starts shivering, twitching, her moans sputtering out in fits. Fuck, she’s building up so hard, he nearly comes right with her.

 

“I’m in love with you,” he rasps, nearly hisses, just as he feels her walls start to flutter and spasm all around him and it’s almost drowned out by her high-pitched, startled scream. “Always, Tessa, oh fuck... _always_."

 

She barely hears his whispers, his muttering, because she is falling apart around him. All she hears as the stars explode at the back of her eyes is "The only man you fall apart for like this is _me_."

 

As if _that_ isn't a part of the problem. As if that isn’t why she needs to know that she can make it on her own...that she can live without being dependent on all the things he makes her feel. As if she has ever truly known herself outside of him, and as if he'll ever understand that concept. The problem isn't that he loves her—never has been. The problem is that she isn’t sure he can truly know her, because she doesn't know herself. And she can’t solve that, not tonight and not in his arms. Which is why she had to leave him (why she can’t come back).

 

Which is why, right now, all she can do is try to not lose her mind when her orgasm unfolds like a flower at dawn, like petals opening up, slow at first, in a few short ripples at a time and then all at once, bursting and blowing open, ripe and sharply. She opens for him and shines in all her colours, at the beginning of a new day.

 

Her mind is hazy as she keeps quaking and shuddering around him, her mouth falling open in a soundless scream and she digs her fingertips into his ass hard enough to draw blood, not to hurt but to hold on to something tangible, so she isn't swept away by the intensity of her emotions like a seaweed by the tide, ripped from its roots, prey to the whims of nature.

 

"Baby," she mumbles as her eyes roll back on the aftershocks and his movements become more erratic. _It's okay_ , she means to say and puts both arms around his neck. _You don't have to take care of me anymore. You did everything I asked of you. You get to fall now too._

 

He holds on to his self-control as hard as he can, mostly because he wants to watch her unravel under him, wants to remember for the rest of his godforsaken life the way it feels to make Tessa Virtue come. Her fingers are digging into him, ten pressure points of pain in his skin, and he hopes like hell that she'll leave bruises. He doesn't give a damn if they're visible, he just wants her marks on him.

 

She pulls him so hard against her hips by his ass, he thinks she might bruise between her thighs just from that. She holds him like she doesn’t want to let him go. And he goddamn won’t fight her on it. He’d stay there forever if he could, dangling on the edge of release because he doesn’t want it to end, doesn’t want this to be over, ever.

 

But then her lashes flutter, her eyes rolling back as her body writhes, and she grabs blindly for his neck with both arms, murmurs, "Baby," under her breath, and he can't hold on any longer. He buries his face in her shoulder as he falls apart, lets her wrap her arms around him this time and whisper nonsense into his hair, mostly curses and _baby_ and his name, and if he leaves two angry, wet tearstains on her skin as he comes, she doesn't say a word about it.

 

He thinks he’s snapped something, fast and hard as he climaxes, like a brick to his groin shocking his system and making his heart stop for a few solid seconds. He comes so hard, it nearly blows out his brain. He practically forgets the lead up to this, the whole miserable, insane, amazing night, forgets his zip code, forgets his own damn name as he’s twitching and collapsing inside and on top of her. Holy Lord, fucking _hallelujah_.

 

And how exactly is this supposed to have been the last time?

 

She holds him as he comes undone, barely coherent herself and she also holds him tight after. Clinging to him like a monkey for his first two attempts of pulling out of her and only lets him gently roll off of her on the third. Protocol would be to go pee and clean up but she won't let him leave the room, won't go herself either. She tucks herself under his chin and holds him in somewhat of a death grip. He doesn't get to go anywhere right now. It might be selfish. She's pretty sure it is. But she doesn't care.

 

It's after a long minute of silence, of trying to get her heartrate to something related to normal and coming down from the high of the craze with him, that dirty, possessive game of claiming and submitting that they play so well, and then she realises: "We didn't use anything." No condom, no pulling out, nothing at all. And now that they're both with other people technically, this might be something they should at least address. (And it's something practical to talk about too, something mechanical and base...nothing about love or fear or the rest of their lives.)

 

His heart is still pounding, head still spinning, his breath choppy, and he doesn't want to think about the implications of what she just said. He didn't even think about a condom, and there's a very small selfish part of him that's glad about it. He doesn't want to get her pregnant, certainly not right now with everything so screwed up between them, but he wanted to feel her without any barriers tonight, nothing between them in any sense of the phrase, wanted to empty himself inside her, to leave her with that if he can’t leave her with anything else.

 

"Do I need to..." he starts, thinking that he can drive to the drugstore and get her some Plan B. The pharmacist will assume it's for Kaitlyn, anyway.

 

"No," she says. "Still on the shot." Like she has been during most of their career.

 

"Okay," he whispers. "I...you don't need to worry about..." He doesn't want to say it, really, but the truth is that he's had protection with his actual girlfriend every single time.

 

"And I always...you know, with Ryan," she says at the same time as he struggles to find the words. "We always use protection."

 

So apparently she's done the same with the fucking douchebag, and what exactly does that say about them both? About the “relationships” that they’re supposed to be having. And what kind of relationship they have with each other. They fall silent over this revelation and lie intertwined, both lost to their own thoughts for a while.

 

"Do you want to talk about it?" Tessa asks, eventually, after a long time of that.

 

He shakes his head. If she tries to talk about this now, he's going to yell at her, or cry, or end up kidnapping her and taking her to Alberta or something, where he'll keep her forever in a cabin in the woods with him and never let her leave. None of those seem like a good choice right now.

 

"Just...stay for awhile," he says, kissing her bare shoulder. "Go to sleep with me. I know it's not much, but...just stay."

 

"Do you have a blanket somewhere?" she mutters, examining the room in the light of day, fully visible for the first time which makes it somehow more desolate than it had looked like at night. She doesn't wait for his answer before she adds: "You know you can stay in my guest room, whenever this gets too sucky."

 

It's an open door too, for more of the stupidity of this very brand. She shouldn't offer that path but she does anyway, because she's weak, because she doesn’t think she can walk away from him after this, never could have, realistically anyway. And apparently she’s also not such a nice person. Because she’s pretty sure she does want to do this with him again and she hardly cares that he’s not hers to take.

 

He blinks at her. She can't mean that. She doesn't.

 

"You want me to stay over, T?" he says as he reaches beside the bed to find and then tug on his underwear and gets up to go suss out a blanket. She's always cold when she sleeps, and she thrashes too much for him to keep a good hold on her all through the night. She smiles at him, a little tentatively, watching as he moves about the room, hoping she won’t think too lowly of him for the state of it. For the empty beer cans scattered around the floor.

 

"If you need it," she says, and he bites his lower lip and hands her a ratty grey blanket, clean, but with a few holes. Is this what he thinks it might be? She _does_ want him...at her house, offering a repeat of this if he needs it (which he does, always). Or is she just being a good friend? With Tessa these days, it could be anything and everything.

 

"Thanks," he says, not sure what else to say, and then gestures at the largest hole. "It's not much, obviously, but it'll keep you warm."

 

"Yeah," she nods, her heart aflutter as if she was a teenager again. The idea of maybe doing this again with him in a real bed makes her nervously excited. She is such a stupid, reckless woman. She even tries to flirt, ill-advised as that is. "Will you keep me a little warm too? Until I get kick-y?"

 

He loves her, he absolutely does, but sometimes she is positively dense. Like she even has to ask that. Like she even has to try and be charming with him, or cute, or flirty. Hasn’t tonight showed, if nothing else, that he’s the world’s biggest sucker for her and he will snap himself in half if it means giving her what she needs, being everything he wants him to be?

 

"Yes, T, I'll keep you warm," he says, and she must hear the note of loving exasperation because she grins and scoots over, curling up on her side.

 

"You want a shirt or anything?" he asks, because she's stark naked and her clothes are on his kitchen floor. She nods.

 

"For you, too - if you're gonna try sleeping naked, I won't keep my hands to myself," she says, slyly, and he has to laugh because historically, she's right.

 

And also _woah_ , okay. What?

 

He had fully expected her to retreat back into her shell as soon as he’s pulled out of her really, had begun to steal himself for that, but she’s still...this. She’s still Tess. _His_ Tess.

 

Tess who, whenever they had been intimate before, matched his passions and his demanding nature with a hunger and a fervour that was near insatiable. Tess who, drunk off her ass one day during the fabled Carmen season, had declared to him, over her shoulder, reverse-cowgirl riding him: “I’m always a slut for this.” This Tess... _this_ Tess that tells him unabashedly that if he’s not going to put a shirt on, she’s going to fuck him again. He has half a mind to just strip right back out of his underwear and take her up on it but he doesn’t want to push his luck. He still has trouble believing that this might not have been a very detailed, very long booze-induced coma dream.

 

So he says "Fair enough," and digs around in his duffle bag in the corner and throws her a T-shirt and puts one on himself. The shirt is far too big on her, but he loves the sight of her in his clothes. (It is entirely possible he has constructed whole entire fantasies around her wearing his jersey.)

 

Tessa smells his shirt shamelessly as she pulls it over her head, and for a moment longer when she's folding herself against his side. It isn't until he has her tucked under his chin, face to chest that she murmurs: "I love you."

 

It's a friend-I love you, maybe. Maybe it's an everything-I love you, too. Partly it's good night. And sorry. And _I'm_ in _love with you_.

 

Mostly it's that.

 

Scott should've expected this, he supposes, but then again, she always did know how to throw him for a loop. His eyes sting, and he closes them to keep himself in check. She’s still his in this too, then. And this might really be a dream after all. He really doesn’t want to go sleep now, really tries to fight it. Because no matter how miraculous this is, he knows it’ll be over in the morning. And that’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker.

 

"Love you too, T," he mutters, a little hoarse from the thickness in his throat, and then he presses his face into her hair, breathes her in, and finally lets himself relax. For the first time in a very, very long time, he actually feels sleepy, even if for once he doesn’t want to be. But he can’t help it, his body is falling into safety, into calm. For the first time since the end of April, he’s sated, content, because Tessa's beside him, and, for at least a little while, he isn't hurting. For the first time ever, his house feels like a _home._ And he knows it won't last (he’s not _that_ stupid). But still, he is very, very good at pretending that it could.

 

Tessa doesn't know when she falls asleep. But she knows that she wakes up much later, when the random Wednesday has already dragged on to midday. Scott is dead to the world, even as she leaves the bed and collects her various belongings from his place. Ryan has texted her a couple of times, on the phone she left in her duffel bag in the living room the night before, about wishing her a good morning and a great run (she lied through her teeth to him via text before she left to see Scott), and about how he locked up after him and threw the spare key into her mailbox, and about how he's looking forward to seeing her sometime next week.

She really doesn't care.

 

She takes another ten minutes looking for a piece of paper and finds only an old pizza carton (Scott doesn't even like pizza that much, but it’s there all the same). She writes, hoping to hit the right tone and when she's done, leaves the "note" next to his mattress, looks at his sleeping frame for a long moment, her body tired, aching beautifully and marked by him, and then leaves. She has no idea about anything, more confused than she has been since she left him that April day but then again not. It’s not like the wanting him ever truly went away. But in regards to her identity, her life and person outside of him, she still hasn’t made an inch of progress. So it’s exactly like she said to him...nothing has changed. Except now he knows that she’s been in love with him all this time, all the same. She has no idea if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, though.

 

Another thing that is new now is that she gave him an open invitation to be the world’s worst people together again (like they have some pretty good experience with already). She feels guilty when she leaves. Not for leaving him but for leaving him with the knowledge that she is open to do this again, very open, indeed. Because her and Ryan? That’s booty calls and photo ops, and she doesn’t care a bit about “cheating,” ‘cause it’s not really cheating if there’s not really a relationship. It’s different for Scott. He has a girlfriend, a committed one, an actual grown-up relationship that is on its way of getting very explicitly exclusive.

 

But last night happened. And the way she knows herself and him, knows _them_ , the way he looked at her and what he’s said...it could happen again. Yeah, _that’s_ what she feels guilty about as she pulls out of his driveway, making her way to her empty, quiet house, her body still twitching every time she shifts her weight with the memory and the soreness of him moving inside her.

 

Scott wakes up sluggishly in the late morning sunlight, reaching for her, and stops when he realises that her side of the mattress is bare. She's gone, as he knew she would be. The knowledge doesn't stop the dull ache that starts throbbing behind his breastbone, or the slow creeping dread that crawls through his entire frame.

 

He rolls over, and that's when he sees her note. He's angry, and hurting (even if he knew this was coming), and wants a drink more than anything right now, but he still can't help but laugh at the fact that they just had one of the most tumultuous, emotional, soul-baring nights of their lives, and her response is to write him a note on a _pizza box_. He squints his eyes, trying to bring her neat handwriting into focus through his bleary eyes.

 

_Had to run. Thank you for last night. Or sorry. If you want to talk, call me. And please remember our rules. No hating each other. My door is always open too, you don't have to sleep at a construction site. Love you, truly. T_

 

He reads it slowly, reads it again, and presses one hand to his chest, rubbing absently as if he can somehow massage away a half-broken heart. She loves him. She still loves him. And he's not okay, not by a long shot, but he knows she means it when she says her door is open for him. She's letting him back in, one slow step at a time, and it's enough. For now, for this moment, it's enough.

 

He stands up, opens the window, and lets the cold clean air flow in.

 

He'll take what she'll give him today.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...even if this may seem like the end...it really isn't. There are still some hills to climb, people!


End file.
